How much do you think the city should charge for recycling?

Asked at Massachusetts Street on March 5, 2008

“Nothing. It should be free. Don’t we all want to do the right thing? We should all pay for it with our local taxes whether we recycle or not. I know I would recycle more if I could just put it on the curb.”

— Libby Gard, retail sales, Lawrence

“I’d say about $10 a month in addition to the trash bill. I think it would help people recycle more and recycle different types of things.”

— Jacob Leal, graphic designer, Lawrence

“I already pay the city to pick up my trash. I don’t see why they can’t just pick it up then.”

— Jocelyn Nichols, sales manager, Lawrence

“As a student, it’s pretty inconvenient for me to recycle on a regular basis. It would make it easier for me, but it would have to be pretty inexpensive.”

Comments

cutny - Did you ever go to college? I'm guessing no. Students don't just go to school for 15 hours and then lay around - at least I didn't with my engineering degree. After 15 hours in class I would spend 45+ hours working on problems or labs. And this is in addition to the 20-30 hours per week that I worked because mommy and daddy didn't pay my way. Besides, Sam never said time kept him from recycling, but convenience. When you are rarely home because you are running around campus, studying in the library, or going to and from your job, where do you recycle? Are you just supposed to stash cans in your already loaded backpack to save them up until you finally do get to go home at 2am? Oh cutny, get a clue.

Option #1: Have it be a charge from the city in addition to trash collection, which will encourage more recycling if people are already paying for it.
Option #2: $10/month

Is wysiwyg69 serious or yanking our chains? If serious, sounds like the "W"hackos who think they should do anything they want to rape the world for today's profit... who cares about the future since we won't be here and the rapture will surely come before then. Hopefully wysiwyg69 won't procreate so he won't have any little rednecks running around to care about their future.

mtnfreak: Usually, when cities run mandatory curbside recycling (not sure if they are considering mandatory or not), the University either participates by having recycling bins available in their buildings and residence halls, or pays a large fee to opt out and does not recycle. Likewise, their job, the bar, etc would also be able to recycle or opt out. Generally people living on campus are not expected to pay fees for garbage/recycling pick up - the university does.

There is nothing to prevent off-campus students from recycling the detritus they create at home.

I pay 10 bucks a month to private company for curbside recycling. I expect the city could do it cheaper.

Do it like Germany does: Recyling is all free. Trash is pay as you go. The more you toss, the more you pay. There are also fines for throwing out recyleables. Everything is billed electronically: trash guys carry electronic tagging devices like our meter readers do.

I agree with Jacob (graphic designers just seem to have it all together and always come up with the right answer :) Let's face it, for those who take their recycling to Wal-Mart (not that many of you would step foot inside) the gas and time used would be well worth paying $10 per month and just leave it at the curb.

wys---, funny you should call us tree huggers, Tree Huggers is the recycling group I use and they do a great job.

This is the logical answer. My household, who regularly puts out one kitchen-sized trash bag a week, is subsidizing the people who don't recycle or compost and put out 6 large bags every week. In much of the world, you have to put out trash in special bags that you pay for in advance, to meter your use.

It would never work in this country, though. Way too many people would just dump their trash in some rural ditch.

T_O_B - Sounds like what we have here, although it's through a private company that the city contracts with. We get a plastic tub for no additional charge on our bi-monthly trash bill. It makes it quite simple. Pick-up is on the same day as the trash pick-up, but they are picked up by different trucks. We pay $30 every other month (which is still reasonable, even though that is double what it was in 2006). However, if we go over a set amount of bags, or have more bags that can fit in a certain size trash can, we do have to buy the additional stickers as well. I think they are $1 as well.

Trucks, gas, drivers, sorting, storing, and employee benefits........sure the city could do it for free. Especially when gas is over $3 a gallon.

Get off you lazy butts and drop off your recycling at one of the many drop off locations in the city. That's free recycling.......or we could eliminate a few cops or teachers and use there salaries and benefits to pay for a mandated city wide system.

The question to me is, "why is there never a middle ground"? A compromise answer is that the city provides more comprehensive self-service recycling centers in, say, 5 or 6 different places in town. Use some city park land if needed. You'd have to run a truck or two to each of them every day (particularly since they wouldn't have crushers). The city does it already for cardboard and newspapers, why not other recyclables. Seems like it should be markedly cheaper than curbside.

I'm lucky to have a garage. I take in a full truckload of stuff about 4 times a year.

salad
Recyling is all free. Trash is pay as you go. The more you toss, the more you pay. There are also fines for throwing out recyleables. Everything is billed electronically: trash guys carry electronic tagging devices like our meter readers do.

YES!! I believe this would be most beneficial for our community. Sign me up!

mtnfreak-hello fellow engineer! You beat me to the punch in responding to cutny!

cutny-I am an engineering student at KU. I spend far more than "15 hours a week" on school. On Monday and Tuesday alone:
4 hours in class (including a 2 hour test)
6 hours studying for said test (not including studying all weekend)
20 hours on a design project

Quit picking up yard waste. If you have a yard producing "waste", then make your yard EAT IT!~)

Start picking up trash once every TWO weeks. The horror...
Pick up recycling every two weeks, too.

Lawrence should have the recycling center, not WalWart. It should be available for dropping off stuff...trash, too.

If "Lawrence" wants to recycle, then it should do the recycling. Melt, mash and meld that stuff! Burn it for power!

Move it on, head it up
Head it up, move it on
Move it on, head it up
Recycle
Ride it out, count me in,
Count me in, ride it out,
Ride it out, Count me in,
Recycle!

Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though they're disapprovin'
Keep that trash a movin'
Recycle!
Don't try to understand it
Just grab, sort, and change it
Soon we'll...be living high and wide.
My hearts calculatin'
My true world will be waitin',
Be waitin' at the end of the ride.

Recycle!
Recycle!~)

Oh and don't forget to have a furniture and electronics recycling barn! ...for the nuts and bolts and granola menchers!~) Require people to work there if they're not chosen for jury duty!~) We need to organize and regulate our militia in this recycling war. Free concealed carry classes and licenses for all disassemblers of the patriarchy!~)

If the energy (transportation and processing) and water that goes into reclaiming the aluminum, steel, glass and plastic of our recyclables is less than extracting new product from their original sources, then we should be looking for a rebate or other payment for our recyclables. If it takes less resources to get the products from their original source, we may be better returning it to the ground locally to oxidize, crumble, or eventually depolymerize to their original mineral state. Perhaps an innovative company can come up with a clean way to burn plastics locally for energy...

My favorite recycling place in Lawrence is the Habitat for Humanity Restore. You can find great deals and put to reuse all manner of construction items, wood, electrical items, shelving, tiles, furniture, etc.

Let's go European on this one. While living in Germany, a local law required the stores to set aside space subsequent to the cashier for customers to remove all the marketing packaging 'scheize' und plastik and leave it with the stores for recycling purposes. May be slow to catch on here initially but it was effective since the German curbside trashcans were scanned and you paid for the amount of your own individualized usage.

what about a 5 dollar a month fee for the special trash can for all recycling and build a recycling center and use labor from people who get into mild trouble? community service instead of sitting in jail on weekends or have the option of working off fines that often dont get paid. make it so that they have a choice but that unpaid tickets and fines are stricter.

I'm almost embarrassed to say that we did not start recycling until about a year ago. I lease one of those giant trash cans on rollers from the city and have two other smaller cans as well for a family of four. Now we can barely fill one of the smaller cans halfway. Another thing that really helps reduce your trash in the first place is eliminating junk mail. In my office 90% of the trash used to be junk mail like magazines, catalogs, credit card apps., etc. One day I decided to call all the companies that were mailing me all this stuff. It took a couple of months, but it worked. My junk mail has dropped by more than half. I wish there was a way to charge these junk mail companies double for postage. They have got to kill a lot of trees every year.